Thursday, January 3, 2013

'Elementary' Review - 1.11 Dirty Laundry

On the newest episode of CBS' Elementary, Sherlock and Joan investigate the murder of the general manager of a high-end Manhattan hotel whose body is found inside an industrial laundry machine; and, since Joan's time with Sherlock is almost up, he offers her an apprenticeship.

"Perhaps you should be taking notes now."

Elementary has frequently had a casting problem. From the list of guest stars in an episode, it can easily be deduced who the culprit will be before a second of the program has aired. Sure, the show has had instances where it tried to wiggle its way around that formula - but for the most part it remains intact. This episode offers up a solid solution - cast two actors with about the same weight of name and facial recognition. This hour featured Mark Moses (Paul Young from Desperate Housewives) as well as Jake Weber (Joe Dubois from Medium). Both of their characters had solid reasoning for being the murderer throughout the first half of the episode. In the second half where things got much more complicated, I strangely cared less about who was the murderer of Mrs. Purcell.
Honesty, the main case in this episode of the death of general manager in a hotel did not grab and entertain me that well. That is until the big twist at the half way point of her and her husband being undercover Russian spies. That changed the direction of this story up quite a bit and kept me entertained without being too derivative. The elements of narrative that focused on their daughter were strong as she fought with both past drug abuse as well as the truth of her parents line of work.
From the beginning of this show's existence, we have known that Watson's stay with Sherlock is in a limited time frame. She was only to be there for six months to watch over and help him and then simply move on to her next client. And yet, we the audience know that this wouldn't happen because we know the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and the relationship between those two characters here is often the most fascinating element of the series. So we all have been patiently waiting to see how the show would go about keeping these two together in a more permanent way. In turns out, they're taking the most simple way out. Watson loves what Sherlock does so he offers her an apprenticeship. Sure, at episode's end, she declined. But who, honestly, doesn't think that next week she start working with this new client and realize how much she wants to work as a detective. We can all see it coming so it better be great once the show finally gets there as well.

So what did everyone think of the episode? Was that a slightly different (longer) opening title sequence? What do you think of the easy route being taken to get Watson as Sherlock's permanent partner? Did you think - even just once - about the plot of the new upcoming FX drama, The Americans during this hour? Share your thoughts in the comments.